Prime Minister, Stop Joking: SMRs Endanger Jamaica

By Dennis A. Minott, PhD

June 17, 2026

The Prime Minister's recent suggestion that Jamaica could embrace Small Modular (Nuclear) Reactors (SMRs) within the next decade raises a fundamental question of public policy: is this serious, evidence-based energy planning, or another episode of technological wishful thinking?

Jamaica's energy challenges are immediate, measurable, and economically punishing. Electricity costs remain among the highest in the hemisphere, burdening households, constraining business competitiveness, and slowing economic growth. At the same time, the island's electricity infrastructure remains vulnerable to storms, terremotos, operational failures, and other disruptions.

Yet instead of concentrating national attention on practical, proven, and economically prudent solutions, the Government appears increasingly attracted to a nuclear option that remains poorly aligned with Jamaica's geography, institutional capacity, and electrical realities. The island-wide blackout of June 5 should have sharpened our focus on those realities. Instead, it seems to have encouraged further distraction.

There are at least seven reasons why SMRs represent the wrong energy choice for Jamaica.

1. Jamaica's Real Problem Is Grid Resilience, Not Generation Capacity

The June 5 blackout demonstrated a critical engineering truth. Jamaica's principal electrical vulnerability is not a shortage of generation capacity. It is weakness in grid resilience, system recovery, operational discipline, and network robustness.

Nuclear reactors, including SMRs, do not solve those problems. Quite the opposite. They require exceptionally stable and well-managed grids in order to operate safely and effectively.

A reactor producing 100 MW may appear small by international standards. However, Jamaica's peak electricity demand has historically been below 700 MW. On an island system of that size, the sudden loss of a single 100 MW unit represents a significant network shock (SCRAM)**.

A country struggling to improve grid resilience should be cautious about introducing a technology that places even greater demands on system stability.

2. SMRs Remain Largely Unproven Commercially

Much of the enthusiasm surrounding SMRs is driven by future promises rather than present performance.

The most widely publicised North American SMR project, led by NuScale and the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, was cancelled in 2023 after projected costs rose dramatically before construction even began.

That experience should serve as a warning. If the world's largest and most technologically sophisticated economies has struggled to bring a flagship SMR project to commercial reality, Jamaica should think carefully before assuming that such challenges can be easily overcome here.

The technology may eventually mature. It may eventually become cost-competitive. But national energy policy should not be built upon technologies that remain commercially uncertain.

3. Institutional Capacity Matters More Than Technology

The June blackout was not caused by a shortage of nuclear physicists.

It exposed weaknesses in maintenance systems, operational oversight, asset management, and grid recovery capability.

Public policy often becomes captivated by grand technological solutions because they appear easier than institutional reform. Yet no reactor, regardless of sophistication, can compensate for weaknesses in governance, maintenance culture, or operational discipline.

If a nation is still working to strengthen management of conventional electricity infrastructure, it should be extremely cautious before assuming responsibility for one of the most demanding technologies ever developed.

The challenge before Jamaica is not primarily technological. It is institutional.

4. Jamaica Already Possesses Superior Indigenous Energy Resources

Nature has been remarkably generous to Jamaica.

The island enjoys excellent solar resources, valuable wind corridors, significant biomass potential, and opportunities for distributed energy systems. These resources require no imported uranium, no specialised nuclear fuel cycle, and no elaborate long-term waste management programme.

Most importantly, Jamaica possesses a history of innovation in indigenous renewable energy.

During the 1980s, the entirely Jamaican ENERPLAN and Verde Siempre initiatives demonstrated the potential of integrated agro-energy systems based on Leucaena leucocephala. These systems produced biomass, 'green' renewable fuel gases, animal feed, and organic fertilisers simultaneously.

That pioneering work attracted international recognition, including a coveted Rockefeller Foundation--Biomass Users Network 1989 award. In 1980, those same Jamaicans secured 40 million Deutsche Marks (DM) for the Government of Jamaica (GOJ) to fund small, medium, and pipeline hydroelectric development projects.

The lesson remains relevant today. Jamaica's long-term energy sovereignty is more likely to emerge from resources that grow in Jamaican soil than from technologies dependent upon mined Uranium nuclear fuel from Canadian or Kazakhstani soil requiring foreign labour and technical expertise.

5. Nuclear Energy Carries Enormous Opportunity Costs

Every major public investment represents a choice.

Money, technical talent, regulatory attention, and political capital devoted to one project become unavailable for others.

A nuclear programme would require extensive new regulatory institutions, specialised training programmes, emergency preparedness systems, security arrangements, and long-term decommissioning provisions.

Meanwhile, proven alternatives already exist.

The same capital could be directed towards transmission upgrades, grid modernisation, utility-scale solar generation, rooftop solar programmes, storage systems, demand-management technologies, and distributed renewable energy projects.

These investments can begin producing benefits within half-years rather than decades.

For a country facing urgent energy challenges, opportunity cost matters.

6. Geography and Seismic Reality Cannot Be Ignored

Engineering divorced from geography quickly becomes a hobbyist's fantasy.

Jamaica is a small island developing state located within a seismically active region of the Caribbean. The island's limited land area severely constrains options for siting major industrial facilities and providing as well as managing emergency exclusion zones.

Advocates often argue that modern reactors are safer than earlier designs. There is merit in that observation. Yet safety is not merely a function of reactor design. It is also a function of geography, emergency response capability, institutional competence, and public preparedness.

Large continental countries possess options that small islands do not.

A nation occupying just 10,991 square kilometres must evaluate risks through a different lens than countries with vast land masses and extensive infrastructure networks.

7. Successful Renewable Models Already Exist

Perhaps the strongest argument against SMRs for Jamaica is that successful alternatives are already visible.

Uruguay transformed its electricity sector within little more than a decade through disciplined planning and sustained investment in wind, solar, hydroelectricity, and biomass. Today, renewable energy dominates its electricity mix at over 98%.

Costa Rica has likewise demonstrated that ambitious renewable energy targets can be achieved through policy consistency, institutional competence, and long-term commitment. Most days--and nights-- renewable energy dominates Costa Rica's electricity mix at over 99%.

Neither country relied upon nuclear power.

Their success did not arise from technological glamour. It emerged from sound planning, steady execution, and confidence in domestic renewable resources.

Those are precisely the qualities Jamaica should seek to emulate.

The Path Forward

The Prime Minister deserves credit for encouraging discussion about Jamaica's long-term energy future. Such conversations are necessary and welcome.

However, ambition must remain tethered to sound, scientific, and engineering reality.

The electrical grid does not respond to speeches, headlines, or technological fashion. It responds to engineering competence, disciplined maintenance, resilient institutions, and sound economics.

Jamaica's path forward is neither mysterious nor unattainable. It lies in modernising the transmission network, strengthening grid resilience, expanding utility-scale and rooftop solar generation, deploying battery or other appropriate storage, accelerating renewable integration, and revitalising indigenous biomass and biogas industries.

None of these measures possesses the glamour associated with nuclear reactors.

What they possess is something far more valuable.

They are proven.

They are achievable.

They are affordable.

And they are aligned with Jamaica's geography, resources, and national interests.

Before we embark upon an expensive and uncertain nuclear adventure, we should first exhaust the extraordinary renewable opportunities already available to us. The evidence suggests that Jamaica's energy future lies not in Kazakhstani or South African uranium, but in the abundant sun, wind, biomass, ingenuity, and practical engineering solutions that already surround us.

Reality, after all, is what keeps the lights on.

**PS: The Origin of the Word "SCRAM":

While "scram" is technically 20th-century American slang for leaving in a hurry ("scram out of here"), a popular and widely accepted backronym in the nuclear industry is Safety Control Rod Axe Man. [1, 2, 3, 4]

This historic nickname stems from the world's first nuclear reactor (Chicago Pile-1) in 1942, where a scientist literally stood ready with an actual axe to cut a rope holding a safety rod, dropping it into the reactor to kill the reaction if it ever went out of control. [1, 2]